Patient’s Guide to HIPAA – Basic Rights: Should I Read the Notice?

HIPAA Guide Quick Links:

FAQ 15: Should I Read the Notice?

Only if you want to. Every expert says that people should know their rights and understand privacy. We agree, but we recognize that people often don’t have the time or interest. Don’t feel guilty if you just don’t have the interest today to read the notice from your doctor, hospital, laboratory, pharmacy, etc. What is important is that the notice exists and that the record keeper who produced the notice has a privacy policy and – we hope – actually implements the policy appropriately.

The HIPAA requirement that each covered entity prepare a notice was a big advance in privacy protection. That remains true even if most patients never read the notice. The notice also tells a covered entity’s employees what the privacy rules are. That is just as important as telling patients what the rules are. In the past, employees often didn’t know whether there were privacy rules or what those rules stated.

To put it another way, you have privacy rights whether or not you know the details. Your rights do not depend on your level of understanding. You can do a better job of protecting your rights if you know more, of course.

Here’s what’s really important:

Read the notice when it matters to you. If you decide that you want a copy of your health records, that’s a time to read the notice and find out how to obtain the records.

If you think that there is an error in your record, read the notice and learn how to ask for a correction.

If you think that your records were improperly used or disclosed, read the notice to see if you are right.

If you have a privacy complaint, you can read about the complaint procedure that the rule provides.

When it makes a difference to you, get a copy of the notice and read it. That could be today or two years from now. You can always ask for a copy, even if you are no longer someone’s patient. If a provider or insurer maintains a website, it should post a copy of its privacy policy on the website. That may make it easier for you to find the notices that you need.

Roadmap: Patient’s Guide to HIPAA: Part 2: Basic Patient Rights: Right to a Notice of Privacy Practices (FAQ 15 of 65)

To score is human. Ranking individuals by grades and other performance numbers is as old as human society. Consumer scores — numbers given to individuals to describe or predict their characteristics, habits, or predilections — are a modern day numeric shorthand that ranks, separates, sifts, and otherwise categorizes individuals and also predicts their potential future actions. This new report by Pam Dixon and Robert Gellman explores this issue of predictive scores and privacy.

This Jan. 30, 2014 report discusses a new right to restrict disclosure of health information under the updated HIPAA health privacy rule. The new provision called “Pay Out of Pocket,” also called the “Right to Restrict Disclosure” gives patients the right to request that their health care provider not report or disclose their information to their health plans when they pay for medical services in full. Navigating the new right will take effort and planning for patients to utilize effectively. This substance of this report is about the new patient right to restrict disclosure, and how patients can use it to protect health privacy.

This report focuses on government use of commercial data brokers, the implications for that usage, and what needs to be done to address privacy problems. The government must bring itself fully to heel in the area of privacy. If it is going to outsource its data needs to commercial data brokers, it needs to attach the privacy standards it would have been held to if it had collected the data itself. Outsourcing is not an excuse for evading privacy obligations. Report authors: Bob Gellman and Pam Dixon.